History
Cambodian diaspora
The Cambodian diaspora: students who left before 1975, refugees from the Khmer Rouge period and the camps, and the families and workers abroad today.
How the communities formed
Small numbers of Cambodians studied abroad before 1975. Students came to Australia under the Colombo Plan from the 1950s.[1] In France there were about 3,000 Vietnamese and Cambodians before 1975.[2]
Beginning in April 1975, about 4,500 Cambodians were evacuated to the United States.[3] Under the Khmer Rouge regime that followed, from about one million to more than two million Cambodians died through starvation or execution.[1][4] The number of people leaving rose after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, largely because of famine, and many waited in camps in Thailand such as Khao I Dang.[5]
The United States admitted 157,518 Cambodians from 1975 to 1994, about 148,000 of them as refugees.[5] About 80,000 Cambodians, Laotians and Vietnamese entered France between the 1975 and 1982 censuses, half of them settling in the Paris region; among Western countries, France took the most after the United States.[2] About 7,000 Cambodians came to Canada from 1975 to 1982.[4]
Today Cambodians also go abroad to work. As of August 2026, 625,452 Cambodian migrant workers were in eight countries, 552,234 of them in Thailand.[6]
Communities today
Each count below uses its own measure and year, so the counts cannot be added up or compared directly.
- United States: about 360,000 people identified as Cambodian, alone or in combination with another group, in 2023 census estimates.[7] See also Cambodia Town, Long Beach.
- France: 49,800 immigrants born in Cambodia, 2019 census.[8]
- Australia: 57,096 people of Khmer (Cambodian) ancestry and 39,043 born in Cambodia, 2021 census.[9]
- Canada: 41,950 people gave Cambodian (Khmer) as an ethnic or cultural origin, 2021 census.[10]
- New Zealand: 11,514 people in the Cambodian ethnic group, 2023 census.[11]
- South Korea and Japan: 74,530 Cambodian residents in South Korea in June 2026,[12] and 28,957 in Japan at the end of 2025.[13]
Explore this section
Community groups abroad: The Cambodian Family · United Cambodian Community · Cambodian Association of America · Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association of Greater Lowell · Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia · United Cambodian Association of Minnesota · Cambodian Association of Illinois · Khmer Community of Seattle King County · École Khmère de Paris · All community associations
Related, not diaspora: Khmer Krom, the Khmer people of the Mekong Delta in Vietnam.
A place to begin
The Cambodian Family
A community-based nonprofit in Santa Ana, California, founded by Cambodian refugees in February 1980.
United Cambodian Community
A social services nonprofit in Long Beach, California, founded in 1977 by Cambodian refugees.
Get to know a Wat
A Theravada Buddhist temple in Dakota County, Minnesota, that calls itself the largest Cambodian Buddhist temple in the United States.References 13
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Museums Victoria, Origins: Immigrant Communities in Victoria, Cambodia
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Michelle Guillon, "Les flux de réfugiés du Sud-Est asiatique en France", 1992 (in French)
- ↑ Historical Society of Long Beach, Cambodian Diaspora
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Olivier Paré, "L'immigration du Vietnam, du Cambodge et du Laos", Mémoires des Montréalais, Ville de Montréal, 2017 (in French)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 AAPI History Museum, Seeking Refuge
- ↑ Cambodianess, "Cambodian migrants account for over half a million working abroad", September 27, 2026
- ↑ Pew Research Center, Cambodians in the U.S. fact sheet
- ↑ INSEE, immigrants by country of birth, 2019 (in French)
- ↑ Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2021 Census QuickStats, Cambodia-born and Khmer ancestry
- ↑ Statistics Canada, 2021 Census, ethnic or cultural origin table
- ↑ Stats NZ, 2023 Census ethnic group summaries, Cambodian
- ↑ Korea Ministry of Justice, immigration statistics, June 2026 (in Korean)
- ↑ Immigration Services Agency of Japan, foreign residents by nationality, end of 2025 (in Japanese)